{"product_id":"love-charm-of-bombs-book-lara-feigel-9781408830444","title":"The Love-charm of Bombs","description":"'The nightly routine of sirens, barrage, the probing raider, the unmistakable engine (\"Where are you?  Where are you?  Where are you?\"), the bomb-bursts moving nearer and then moving away, hold one like a love-charm' Graham Greene  When the first bombs fell on London in August 1940, the city was transformed overnight into a battlefront. For most Londoners, the sirens, guns, planes and bombs heralded gruelling nights of sleeplessness, fear and loss. But for Graham Greene and some of his contemporaries, this was a bizarrely euphoric time when London became the setting for intense love affairs and surreal beauty. At the height of the Blitz, Greene described the bomb-bursts as holding one 'like a love-charm'. As the sky whistled and the ground shook, nerves were tested, loyalties examined and infidelities begun.  The Love-charm of Bombs is a powerful wartime chronicle told through the eyes of five prominent writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and Henry Yorke (writing as Henry Green). Volunteering as ambulance drivers, fire-fighters and ARP wardens, these were the successors to the soldier poets of the First World War and their story has never been told. Now, opening with a meticulous evocation of a single night in September 1940, Lara Feigel brilliantly and beautifully interweaves letters, diaries and fiction with official civil defence records to chart the history of a burning world in wartime London and post-war Vienna and Berlin. She reveals the haunting, ecstatic, often wrenching stories that triumphed amid the mess of a war-torn world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516386910481,"sku":"GOR004904840","price":4.3,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49623140172049,"sku":"GOR010511857","price":4.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645209583889,"sku":"GOR007329351","price":3.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53650287657233,"sku":"GOR006506989","price":3.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408830442.jpg?v=1750857717","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/love-charm-of-bombs-book-lara-feigel-9781408830444","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}